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Saturday, May 19, 2012

The early teen years are a time when charming misinformation
is passed on from kid to kid with the solemn, easy assurance of time-tested
wisdom. “Schnauzer” is a dirty word in
German. The F-word is an acronym meaning
“For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge” (in fact, that became a Van Halen album title
towards the end of the Sammy Hagar era).
And KISS, the name of the rock supergroup, stands for “Knights In Satan’s
Service”.

Eventually we learn better.
Schnauzer, in fact, comes from
Schnauze, meaning “snout”. Although the actual root of the f-bomb is
uncertain, enough cognates abound in the Germanic languages that it most likely
comes to us from a common Indo-European stem through Anglo-Saxon. And, according to Wikipedia, guitarist and
founding member Paul Stanley first suggested the name “Kiss” when original
drummer Peter Criss mentioned that he’d been in a band named Lips; at one
point, founding bassist Gene Simmons claimed it stood for the old rule about
sales pitches: “Keep It Simple, Stupid!”

And yet, though we tell ourselves (and each other) that
there’s nothing so stupid or counterfactual people won’t believe it if you
repeat it often enough, in the main we fail to erect mental checkpoints where
new data can wait for validation before they’re added to our lists of “everybody
knows that” truths. I’m sure most of us
have listened or read as some blowhard confidently preceded some assertion of patent
folly with the words, “Science has proven that ….” Usually, this means one of three things:

Before it’s anything else, the culture war is a word
war. A war of words; a war over words.

In a sense, control over the language is control over
thought: if you have the ability to impose your preferred words and definitions
on the rest of the culture, you can control how
things are said and, eventually, what
is said. No-no words become no-no
thoughts, which become no-no attitudes, values and beliefs.

This is certainly true of the battle against same-sex
marriage. Consider the three theologians
who accused Cdl. Timothy Dolan and the USCCB of “misrepresenting Catholic
teaching”: former
priest Daniel Maguire of Marquette told The Beast, “The bishops will stand
with Dolan and the US Catholic Conference, but on this issue, they are in moral
schism since most in the Church have
moved on [to] a more humane view on the rights of those whom God has made gay.”[*] A little later, writer Matthew DeLuca tells
us that the most recent Gallup polling data says 51 percent of Catholics said gay marriage should be
legal. Which brings up the obvious
question: When did 51% become “most”?

To be sure, it would be nice if everyone in the world
understood and accepted the true meaning of marriage, but …, sadly, the trend
is moving toward fewer and fewer people accepting the true and more traditional
meaning of marriage. As a result, the lone term marriage
is also no longer being used as a shorthand for true marriage by much of the
world. This is the reality that we must confront and overcome; not simply
whine about a misappropriated shorthand and all that goes with it.

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Over on Patheos, The Blogger Who Must Not Be Named has
written a
thoughtful, thorough and not-too-incendiary piece about Perry Lorenzo, the
late director of education for the Seattle Opera, a gay man of his acquaintance
whom he admired and respected as a fellow Catholic. Indeed, the title is, “A Gay Man I Consider a
Saint”.

After you read that, take up Pat
Archbold’s defense of the Blogger, who made it quite clear that he didn’t
know whether Lorenzo was continent and didn’t really care either: “Not my
business. That’s between him and God.” Saith Patrick:

Some of the negative reactions to Mark’s piece bug
me. Some people pointed out that the man
in question lived with another man. How
could Mark point out the holiness of a man who may have [] been actively gay? Scandal! I think some of this reaction is profoundly
unfair. Why is it that we treat same sex
attraction so much differently than other struggles? Sin is sin.

Would Mark have received the same reaction if he
had written the same words about a man who did amazing things for and because
of his faith but who also struggled with alcoholism? No, people would try to assume the best,
praise what he did well, and hope that he died in friendship with the Lord. They wouldn’t be filling up comboxes with
reported bar sightings as everyone would find that extremely rude. But somehow if someone struggles with same-sex
attraction it is ok to be rude?

The timing of these posts is excellent, because my last
post ended on a more strident, pugnacious note than I would have otherwise preferred. Because I want to make it clear that Jesus’
love does embrace homosexuals … just
not the way Andrew Sullivan would prefer.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

A friend of mine posted the editorial cartoon to your left
on Facebook. I guess it’s not enough to
insist that, where my faith and my Church are concerned, I do in fact have a
sense of humor. So let me point out what’s
really funny about the cartoon: the nun is wearing a habit. Definitely not representative of the LCWR.

To be effective at manipulation, you want to keep things
simple. So rather than portray the nun
in an ugly pantsuit (far more common), you dress her in the almost-forgotten
habit, just as you draw Papa Bene as if he were being cast for the next
installment of Grumpy Old Men. Then, to really demonstrate how shallow your
theology is, you draw Christ the Lord as a cute little koala bear of a man with
a smiley face, looking nothing at all like someone who could open up a can of
whip-ass on moneychangers in the Temple (Jn 2:14-16) or condemn Chorazin and Bethsaida
to a fate worse than Tyre and Sidon (Mt 11:21-22).

Of course the cartoon is meant to be ironic, in the sense
that it supposedly demonstrates an incongruity or inconsistency in Catholic
teaching. After all, nowhere in any of
the Gospels does Jesus say anything about homosexuality — good, bad or
indifferent. So isn’t the Catholic
Church concerned with preserving his
teachings over all others?

Just like young boys at a matinee movie showing like to supply
“dialogue” (i.e., wisecracks, burps and other noises) to fill the gaps in the
script, so people like to answer the question, “What Would Jesus Do?”, with all
sorts of self-serving mishegoss. Especially
if the Gospels can’t contradict them with a direct quote. Who cares what Ss. Paul, Peter, John and
those other losers said? Jesus didn’t say it!

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This site is not an official organ of the Holy Catholic Church.The opinions expressed on this blog are solely those of the author, and are not to be construed to express the opinions of the Holy See or the Dioceses of Fort Worth and Dallas. Doctrinal discussions should be considered authoritative only so far as the relevant official documents of the Catholic Church are quoted; any errors of interpretation or explanation are the author's alone, and I would appreciate correction.

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